Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Listening to the “news” and reading the usual sources on the internet has become surreal as the summer winds down. The key word lately is infrastructure. The President and the Democrats launched some initiatives that have no chance of being approved by Congress because they have to run for re-election on something, especially with underemployment the highest it’s been since World War II.
The World Banks long-awaited report on land grabs is out. I’ve not had time to study it — I only found out an hour ago — but here are some first impressions.
It would be heartening to think that there could be trust regained in place of the fear, what is it that those who honour ownership above all else fear? And from whence came the sense of alienation from one another, and the sense of entitlement of one above the other?
This week on Crop To Cuisine. We speak with Curt Ellis of the award winning documentary, King Corn, about his new projects, Food Corps and Truck Farm. Carol O’Meara joins us to help with the harvest. And Aubrey White is with us for another installment of From The Ground Up, our exploration of the adventures facing the New American Farmer. All that, headlines in food and farming, and more.
According to a recent article in the Royal Society’s journal Philosophical Transactions B, agricultural areas that typically experience extreme weather events every “one in 20” years will see an average rise in temperature of 3 degrees Celsius (4.8 ˚F) by 2050. And most places “will be hotter by 1 to 3˚ C.” This could increase the intensity of drought or floods and their effects on agricultural production. But the several articles that discuss climate change provide no firm conclusion on the effects of changing temperatures on crop yields and resource availability in different countries.
-New book “Spinning Our Wheels” from Community Solutions
-Bicycle Coalition shows off real pedal power pulling a pro-green two-wheeled move
-Transportation Kinetics
-I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly
-A benign extravagance
-The water footprint: the hidden cost of our meat consumption
There’s a palpable sense of expectation as we cruise down the canal. Two dozen people and barely a word passes between us. It’s not the roar of the triple outboard engines, nor the forced camaraderie of strangers thrust together, with only their environmentalisms in common. Rather, it’s the sense that we’re travelling towards something—not a place, but a phenomenon, an event—whose name we know but whose face we have not yet seen.
-How to Stem a Global Food Crisis? Store More Water
-Six Steps For Avoiding a Global Water Crisis
-Life and Death on the Colorado River
-Pakistan Flooding Because of Farms?
In April 2010, more than 120 farmers’ groups and non-governmental organizations all across the world signed a statement declaring their opposition to the guiding principles endorsed by the World Bank, the FAO, IFAD and UNCTAD on “responsible” land investments.
We have a guest post today, from Jules Peck, originally posted at Citizen Renaissance.com. We have had some initial explorations of this here at Transition Culture already, but Jules offers some useful additional insights into what the Big Society agenda might mean for Transition, and vice versa. Our thanks for allowing us to publish his piece here.
I’ve recently finished reading Dark Mountain issue 1, the first publication of the global artists’ collective of the same name, of which I am a member. It’s an astonishing collection (work of 37 different authors) of appreciation and reflection on our civilization’s beginning collapse, and I recommend it without hesitation to anyone who has reached the point of understanding that our unsustainable civilization culture can’t be saved, and is trying to cope with that terrible knowledge.
